Currently, there are a number of personal care products that are available to consumers, which are directed toward improving the health and physical appearance of keratinous tissues such as the skin, hair, and nails. The majority of these products are directed to delaying, minimizing or even eliminating skin wrinkling and other histological changes typically associated with the aging of skin or environmental damage to human skin. There are no products, however, that have proven effects in prevention or treatment of sagging or sallowness of the skin (which occur with chronological skin aging and which occur on face and other body sites).
Mammalian keratinous tissue, particularly human skin, is subjected to a variety of insults by both extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Such extrinsic factors include ultraviolet radiation, environmental pollution, wind, heat, infrared radiation, low humidity, harsh surfactants, abrasives, etc. Intrinsic factors, on the other hand, include chronological aging and other biochemical changes from within the skin. Whether extrinsic or intrinsic, these factors result in visible signs of skin damage. Typical skin damage includes thinning of the skin, which occurs naturally as one ages. With such thinning, there is a reduction in the cells and blood vessels that supply the skin as well as a flattening of the dermal-epidermal junction that results in weaker mechanical resistance of this junction. See, for example, Oikarinen, “The Aging of Skin: Chronoaging Versus Photoaging,” Photodermatol. Photoimmunol. Photomed., vol. 7, pp. 3–4, 1990. Other damage or changes seen in aging or damaged skin includes sallowness, sagging, dark under-eye circles, puffy eyes, enlarged pores, diminished rate of turnover, and abnormal desquamation or exfoliation. Additional damage incurred as a result of both external and internal factors includes visible dead skin (i.e., flaking, scaling, dryness, roughness).
Therefore, there is a need for products and methods that seek to remedy these keratinous tissue conditions.
Without being limited by theory, it has been found that certain vitamin B6 compositions can both prevent development of sagging and/or sallowness and reverse existing sagging and/or sallowness of the skin. It has also been found that certain vitamin B6 compositions can stabilize cellular and extracellular components of keratinous tissue, particularly the proteinaceous components such as keratin, collagen, and elastin and the cell membranes of such tissue. The vitamin B6 treated proteins and cells become stronger, more resistant, and are able to withstand higher levels of the above-described insults.
Consequently, Applicants have surprisingly found that topical compositions that contain specific vitamin B6 compositions may be used to provide prophylactic as well as therapeutic treatments for keratinous tissue conditions. For instance, Applicants have found that such compositions may be useful for preventing, retarding, and/or treating dark under-eye circles, puffy eyes, sagging, sallowness as well as spider vessels and/or red blotchiness of skin, promoting skin desquamation, exfoliation, and/or turnover, regulating and/or reducing pore size appearance, preventing/retarding tanning, regulating oily/shiny appearance, preventing, retarding, and/or treating post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation in mammalian skin, preventing, retarding, and/or treating itchiness of mammalian skin, preventing, retarding, and/or treating dryness of skin, preventing, retarding, and/or treating fine lines and wrinkles, preventing, retarding, and/or treating skin atrophy of mammalian skin, softening and/or smoothing lips, hair and nails of a mammal, and preventing, retarding, and/or treating the appearance of cellulite in mammalian skin.